Virtualisation boosts server revenue

Virtualisation has helped drive revenue growth in the EMEA server market, according to the IDC .

The global provider of market intelligence has found that the EMEA market has defied predictions of economic doom and gloom for the first quarter of 2008.

Figures from the IDC show that factory revenue has reached 2.23 billion, which is 4.8 per cent up from 2007's first quarter figures.

Director of European enterprise servers at IDC Nathaniel Martinez reinforced the importance of virtualisation in the market.

"The strong results indicate that virtualization is acting as a driving force in the market, as end users discover its possibilities in management and automation.

"The technology is being used to tackle server sprawl and has particular relevance in the fields of high availability and disaster recovery for SMBs, a segment that server vendors are fiercely aiming at," said Martinez.

IDC also found that shipments went up 8.7 per cent to 680,000 in the same period.

Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa were found to be the fastest-growing regions, with revenue soaring up 11.7 per cent and 16.4 per cent, respectively.

Revenue for Western Europe also rose 2.8 per cent over the same period of the previous year.

Research analyst at IDC Beatriz Valle said that despite the economic turmoil, the market was showing "remarkable resilience".

"The server market is now immersed in a period of disruption and is displaying remarkable resilience in both the value and volume areas.

"Processor technologies and form factors such as multicore and blade are pushing virtualization to the forefront, and vendors are playing catch-up to sell solutions to the midmarket that exploit these technologies. Green computing will also be a segment to watch," said Valle.

One winner in the first quarter of 2008 is Windows, who claimed a revenue share of 37.4 per cent of the EMEA market, signalling an earlier-than-expected uptake of Windows Server 2008.

Meanwhile, sales of x86 servers with 64 bits grew 13.5 per cent annually.